exporting issues

[John Rofrano]

Hi Daniel, Sounds like you’ve been having a rough time in the wrong forum. You’re not the first. The forum names are horrible and people are confused all the time.

I don’t believe that there is anything that you can do to save yourself at this point. If your hard drive is full, the only way to fix that is to copy files off of it onto another hard drive and them delete them from the full drive to free up space. I think the problem you are up against now is that FCP X is not giving you that option. Even if you free up space, it has stopped processing to ask you a questions with only one option and that is to Quit. (i.e., there is no Retry option) 🙁

Without knowing more about your setup, it is difficult to make specific recommendations. If you have an open firewire port or USB port you can try attaching another drive and moving files into it to free up space on the drive you are rendering to. If that popup windows was there while the percent complete was still increasing, then you may still be able to free up space so that it can complete in the background. That is what I would try first.

If not, press Quit and then tell us all that you can about your setup and what external drives you are using and how they are attached. I believe the age of your 2009 Macbook and slow I/O are going to be the gating factor when rendering but at least we can tell you how to optimize what you have and what options to use before trying again.

Good Luck!

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Daniel Seals]

So I woke up this morning to find that the export was successful woo woo thanks so much has for all your help now it’s time to play with photoshop

[John Rofrano]

That’s great news.

What are you plans to make sure that it doesn’t happen again? 😉

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Daniel Seals]

To be honest am still not sure if I need to mpeg my clips before they go in fcpx

[John Rofrano]

Well that’s what I was getting at. I don’t believe you said what your source format was in the other thread so I can’t make a recommendation just yet.

Here is the balance:

(A) FCP X can edit native formats if your Mac is up to the task

– or –

(B) FCP X can transcode to ProRes 422 if your Mac is not

I don’t know what “mpeg my clips” means… I’m going to assume it means using MPEG Streamclip to convert your source files which is not needed with FCP X. If you need to transcode, FCP X can do that for you.

Since you are using a 8 year old 2009 Macbook that wasn’t designed for video editing (i.e., it’s just a Macbook not a Macbook Pro) you are going to be constrained by what it can handle. Also you only have slow USB 2 and Firewire 400 ports so external drives are going to be slow.

How are your external drives connected? Firewire 400 will give you faster access than USB 2.0 will. Creating a Master ProRes file from your project and then using Compressor to convert it to MPEG4 might be a better workflow. You just have to have enough storage.

What is the possibility of upgrading to a newer Mac. That Mac was never meant to handle MPEG4 encoding which is why it’s taking days to complete.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Daniel Seals]

I would love to get a new Mac however this isn’t a option the external drive was a wd passport.. The wireless one.

The only other option is I learn adobe’s premier and edit on my pc… However I was under the impression fcpx was easier to use

[John Rofrano]

[Daniel Seals] “the external drive was a wd passport.. The wireless one. “

Do yourself a favor and pick up a USB external drive. You should not try and edit video over a wireless connected drive.

[Daniel Seals] “The only other option is I learn adobe’s premier and edit on my pc… However I was under the impression fcpx was easier to use”

Well… if you have a PC there is a third option… you could sell both your PC and your Mac and get a better Mac. 😉

Seriously, don’t try and edit video with a wireless drive unless you are prepared for all of your renders to take days. I’m guessing you paid 2x – 3x more for a wireless drive when a much cheaper USB drive would have performed a lot better.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Daniel Seals]

Hi,

Sorry no I didn’t use the wireless feature while editing I did that wired through the USB 3.0

Thanks

Danny

[John Rofrano]

[Daniel Seals] “I did that wired through the USB 3.0”

Your 2009 Macbook doesn’t have USB 3.0. How are you connecting it via USB 3.0?

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Daniel Seals]

Hi John,

Sorry as you can tell am not very tech savey on Mac I just read the 3.0 from the spec on the hard drive